The plane that crashed in Vinhedo (SP) on Friday (9), had a fall of 4 km in less than a minute, according to flight monitoring by Flightradas. Although it is not yet clear weather conditions must have caused the fatal crash.
The plane was 5,000 meters (5km) high at 12:23 pm. At 1:21 pm, the aircraft had to make a sharp turn and data show that, at 1:22 pm, it was at an altitude of 1,250 meters. After he began to fall, he assumed a position that was practically impossible to avoid a mortal fall.
Plane falls into “flat screw”
Fernando Catalano, director of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the São Carlos campus of the University of São Paulo, explained to Record News that the movement hit by the plane at the time of the crash was almost impossible to reverse.
The “flat screw,” or stall, as the motion of the fall is called, shows the plane falling almost vertically, rotating on its own axis as it descends — like a bolt being tightened.
The professor explained that this is a very rare event to occur with aircraft – but once it starts, it is almost impossible to reverse the position. “The pilot must have tried everything,” he guessed.
Can ice be guilty of crashing plane?
One of the factors that may have caused or influenced the crash of the plane is a failure in the aircraft’s anti-icing system.
Due to the altitude and speed, it is not difficult for ice to form on the plane. The most likely location is the wing – which directly influences aerodynamics, as explained by Roberto Peterka, an aviation expert, to Metrópoles.
“It came in a loss of control in flight. The probable hypothesis is precisely the formation of ice. Ice ends up forming on the wings and alters the aerodynamic profile, and then the aircraft loses lift and falls to the ground. Probably, if it had more height, the ice could thaw, and it would acquire normal flight conditions.”
The newspaper also reports that the pilot of the plane that crashed would have asked the control tower to change its altitude (it was 5 thousand meters) because of the ice levels, but the request was denied.
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